Tramlines are increasingly being used in agriculture as means to provide growers a guide to mark their fields. In general, tramlines are blank rows left in the field which provide markers during spraying, fertilizing, cultivating and other operations.
The tramlines prevent waste of seed during planting and prevent plant damage by tractor wheels during operations subsequent to planting. Damaged plants may form havens for disease and may interfere with harvesting or add an inferior product, reducing the overall value of product from a field.
By guiding, spraying and fertilizing, tramlines ensure complete coverage and prevent waste of expensive chemicals and damage by double application.
Tramlines are made during seeding operations wherein the grower will cut off a single seed meter or selected meters on a seed drill, thereby simply not planting a row or rows to leave tracks evident in later stages of growth. The tramlines eliminate previous methods used by growers wherein guides, foams, flagmen, or other methods were provided to allow effective spraying of fields. Without tramlines, growers tend to miss or overlap during spraying operations. Further, the tramlines allow growers to work the field sooner after rains because of the tendency of tramlined fields to dry quicker.
Also, seed is not wasted on rows which will later be trampled by the wheels of the tractor in that the spacing of tramlines usually coincides with the spacing of the wheels of tractors.
In conventional operations seed is delivered to seed tubes by seed meters, which are arranged at the top of the tubes and at predetermined intervals below a seed bin. A drive shaft extends through all the meters, translating the shaft slide metering drums and blocking bearings to desired positions in the seed meters to control seeding rate.
A need exists for a device which will enable the conventional seeding rate adjustment, while at the same time disabling selected meters for forming tramlines.